Islay, Port Ellen, The Ard

NR 364 447. Situated on the irregularly shaped summit of an elongated rocky ridge on the S shore of The Ard, immediately S of Port Ellen and about 150m E of Rubha a' Chuinnlein, there is a small fort. The S side of the ridge falls at first steeply and then precipitously to the shore 9m below, and on the N heavily indented margin of the summit stands some 6m above the level of adjacent, ill-drained ground.

Measuring about 36m by 12m internally, the fort was defended by a single drystone wall and outworks. The main wall, whose inner and outer faces appear to have incorporated blocks of considerable size, is in severely wasted condition for the most part; a mass of tumbled debris covers the flanks of the ridge, particularly at the E end of the N side, where the presence of 'jumper-holes' in some of the boulders suggests that much destruction may have been caused by blasting in recent times. On the SW, however, the absence of any traces may be the result of the bodily collapse of the wall down the steeply inclined rock slope. For most of its surviving course the wall appears to have varied between 2.5m and 3m in thickness, but immediately to the W of the entrance, which is situated near the middle of the N side, it is no more than 1.3m thick. It is a curious feature of the denudation of the remains in this sector that stone-robbers appear to have selected the core material in preference to the massive facing-stones, the reverse of normal procedure.

The entrance itself is approached by way of a broad natural ramp, at the head of which the wall describes a right angle to allow direct passage through the defences; a section of the SE side-wall of the passage survives to a height of 0.55m in five courses. At the E end of the fort the main wall is set back at least 3m from the edge of a low cliff, the face of which may have been partly shaped by quarrying to provide material for the defences. Additional protection was therefore provided at this point by an outer wall, now reduced to a thin scatter of core material in which a single outer facing-stone can be seen on the edge of the cliff. Another isolated length of walling, represented by a single stretch of outer facing-stones, sprang from the main fort wall some way to the E of the entrance. It is possible that the earthfast stone situated just outside the outer face of the main fort wall on the NE may belong to the springing of such an outwork, but it is more likely to form part of a stabilising revetment for the main wall.

The interior of the fort, which is for the most part level and grass-covered, contains a number of relatively shallow depressions; the round or irregular oval examples of no great size probably indicate the activity of stone-robbers, but those of subrectangular plan, partly lined with upright slabs (a and b on RCAHMS 1984 plan) may be the remains of secondary dwellings built in the body of the tumbled wall-debris. Similar structures have been observed on fortified sites on Tiree (RCAHMS 1980).

RCAHMS 1984, visited April 1979.

RCAHMS surveyed this fort using plane-table and alidade at a scale of 1:400. The resultant plan was redrawn in ink and published at a reduced scale (RCAHMS 1984, fig. 76B).

This small fortification is situated on a coastal promontory on the seaward side of the Ard S of Port Ellen. Irregular on plan, it measures some 36m from ENE to WSW by 12m transversely (0.04ha) within the remains of a heavily robbed wall, which can be traced most of the way round the margin of the summit area. The wall measures between 2.5m and 3m in thickness, and at the ENE end, where a run of the outer face survives, there are traces of an outer wall. The entrance is on the N and is approached by a natural ramp that mounts the side of the knoll. At least three sub-rectangular hollows partly lined with upright slabs can be seen within the interior and are probably the remains of structures.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 23 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC2177